Session 4 [Continuation from past three posts]

Well, I missed a day, and I’m not about to write an entry now. Such is life. When Chicago gets a beautiful, cloudless 82 degree Sunday in early April, my ethical obligations to take advantage of that day overrode my ethical obligation to stay inside and write. I’m sure you understand.

I did, however, bring my Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Marx, and spent a little time reading these things while taking advantage of the noonday sun, hoping that it will let me see some more truth. In reality, I opened up the Kierkegaard, read a few paragraphs, and my mind started racing. The very fact that I had started to construct a problem made me see things and think about things that I hadn’t thought before. Before, I was just reading it for the sake of “understanding,” but in a general, purposeless way. This time, I was reading with a purpose; I was hunting for something, and I was finding it.

I hope to have a full entry tonight and get this problem situated before I hit the sack so I can start on the problem tomorrow. Tomorrow, I would like to take a few of the Kierkegaard sections, analyze them, and digest them for the purpose of writing the paper.

[This is part three of a series of posts. Sorry for the delay: Spring break handily destroyed my motivation for doing work.]

Session 3

[Preface: Although the last two sessions do not clearly offer anything in the way of a constructive problem, today, I realize that it has had a positive affect on my mind. Many thoughts and anxieties that have been building up needed to get released before I could have a more clear mind.

Also, as I was nearing the end of page 2, something struck me as interesting: I was looking at the keyboard the entire time, and not getting distracted (see session 2). There are a few reasons for this, I suspect [this computer is not the same as the computer I had been typing on. The keyboard is much smaller and I am unaccustomed to it, and therefore make more mistakes, and therefore depend on looking at the screen more often. Also, this computer has been infested with a virus that makes web-surfing much more annoying than usual, and my drive for checking the internet is overcome by my extreme annoyance. Actually, when I first turned on the computer, I automatically checked a few sites, but became so frustrated that I closed the web browser down.

Continue reading “An Experiment in Teaching the Essay: Brainstorming 2” →

[This post represents part of a project that I introduced in the previous blog post. There are plenty of spelling/grammatical errors in this paper. This is intentional: I wanted this exploration to be a representation of an actual brainstorming process, mistakes and all.]

…what to write about, what to write about? My brain is feeling quite sluggish this afternoon, and sadly, a lot of ideas are not coming to mind. But, after ten years of either being a student or professor, I have learned that my mind does not think well when it doesn’t have structure. Continue reading “An Experiment in Teaching the Essay: Brainstorming I” →

Recently, I have undertaken an experiment: I will write the essay along with my students. However, I am doing more than just writing an essay and presenting them with the finished product. Instead, I have been writing all of my brain-storming sessions, my process of figuring out what I want to say, and how I am going to incorporate the course texts into my essay. Continue reading “An Experiment in Teaching the Essay, Introduction” →

You might be able to run, but do you know how to run? To what extent do you command your legs, or do you command some kind of Sergeant who takes the orders from an incompetent Commander and passes them on to the troops? Check this out.

On my third try, I made it as far as 1.4 meters. Then I flopped around on the starting line (or behind the starting line) for another 10 attempts. Then I made 2.4 meters, thought I had it figured out, then again couldn’t make it past the starting line.

I do not even know if there is a way to think clearly about Japan. The power of the Earth still eclipses the power of humanity innumerable times, and we are inconceivably lucky that life can exist here at all. We should not be perplexed when that blind force of nature extinguishes life with apparent cruelty.

I suppose that all we can hope for, is that in those relatively few cases where human effort, compassion, and ingenuity can still save lives and repair for the future, humans are at their best.

Ever since I have read this essay, every time a great tragedy befalls humanity, I think about these words. And if there is a universal morality, it is described here most clearly and poetically

In everyone’s life, there are a few people who stand above others in how they have shaped one’s life. Not to make comparisons to other people, but my mental life has been radically changed by a few outstanding teachers I had in college. I was very lucky in that three professors took me under their wing, brought me to different conferences around the country, and invited me to help them write a book and game about Darwin and the rise of Naturalism in the 19th century. The mix of people initially struck me as odd: Marsha Driscoll is a psychologist and Roman Catholic; Elizabeth Dunn is an American Historian and Episcopalian; Dann Siems is a environmental biologist specializing in the fresh water of Northern Minnesota, and an atheist/pantheist/universalist (depending on the current stage of his ever-evolving thoughts); and I was a philosophy student most interested in the 17th century Dutch-Jewish philosopher Spinoza and the ancient Greek Heraclitus and an agnostic/atheist.

But after spending some time with them, I realized that we made a marvelous team. Marsha, Elizabeth and Dann are all exceedingly intelligent, sociable, and enjoy a great debate and discussion. Their temperaments were different but well matched: Elizabeth is a hard-nosed researcher and committed to the details in an historical environment; Marsha’s mind possessed perhaps the most William-James-esque open-mindedness, sharpness and jovial playing of paradigms I have ever encountered; Dann was perhaps the most intensely idea-oriented, collegially argumentative, and certainly the most scientifically minded of the group. At the same time, they all shared each of these traits. I mention the religions because in the creation of the Darwin game, these differences might make someone scratch their head in confusion. But for us, it did nothing but add to the rich diversity and complexity of our conversation, maintained an open-mindedness while tempering our ideas with stern critical thought.

My first “thick” experience with the team came in March of 2004, when they invited me to Athens, Georgia to take part in a “Reacting to the Past” conference–something that has taken a very prominent place in my intellectual and teaching life. I can’t remember why we were so lucky, but our team was housed in a beautiful bed-and-breakfast Victorian-age house. Dann and I shared a room for a few days (and even a bed!). I didn’t know him well at the time, but that would change over the next few days.

As the youngest one of the team, I figured that I would be the one staying up late every night, exploring the city and hanging out with the few other young people on attending the conference. How wrong I was. Every night, after dinner, our team, along with a one or two other people from the conference, sat in the indoor balcony and expressed our enthusiasm for the Athens and Anne Hutchinson games. Long after I would have otherwise gone to bed, Dann’s intensity of conversation kept us awake until the early morning hours. The pedagogy was a new way of teaching and learning, and the possibilities for how we could implement it in future projects stirred our imagination. We argued not only about the new mode of teaching, but about the ideas presented in the game itself. For those of you who are unfamiliar, the game basically involves role-playing historical characters in watershed moments of history, such as the end of the Greek Peloponnesian War and the trial of Socrates.. Emotions have a tendency to run high, which, within the context of the idea-driven game, only serves to magnify our interest in the ideas. Throughout the night, and immediately at the breakfast table, our conversations were infused with arguments about strategy, arguments, dealing with other players; and we were amazed at how lively it made our thinking about old ideas run. Similar experiences were repeated again and again during our annual trips to Barnard College in New York City at the annual Reacting conference there.

Dann was always a battery of thought in our team. His mind was “on” at all times, and at just about every moment I spent with him, he would share some new idea he had about, well, anything. He was a great synthesizer of knowledge, drawing comparisons and lessons from Athens and Puritan Boston to understand scientific and social issues of the modern day and other stages of history and scientific paradigms.  While Elizabeth, Marsha and I would argue with him, and often believed he was overlooking something important or attacked a problem with an strange conception of the model, he probably did more to stir thought than any one of us– and considering Elizabeth’s and Marsha’s contribution, that is saying quite a bit.

For the two or three years following that conference, our team met frequently to create the Darwin game. Creating the game was not about merely dividing and delegating duties. It grew in a very organic way. We watched it move from a very basic skeleton to something incredibly rich and diverse. It was an amazing process to partake in: Marsha and Elizabeth were our backbone, for certain, but Dann’s lightning mind, wide research, and ingenious contributions gave a special life to the game. Without him, the game would be relatively stale, I think.

I regret that my connection with him waned since I moved to Chicago. I appreciated him immensely, and as I stepped into the world of my graduate education and teaching, he was on my mind often. But I am a horrible long-distance communicator, a bad habit that is perhaps a symptom of never having lost anyone close to me in my entire life. I of course recognize that we are all mortal, and that we all die, but I have never had to confront this reality at a deep emotional level. My habits are entrenched in the idea that there will always be time for communication later. But there won’t be.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to see him last June when I traveled to Bemidji, just in time for a fundraiser for Dann. At that time, his prognosis was already grim. But he was well enough to attend the fundraiser and I was able to see him, thank him, and shake his hand one last time. He seemed tired and somewhat overwhelmed, but I hope he understood how much I appreciated him. I am not sure.

One memory that will always remain with me is a fairly mundane one. I was in the science building of Bemidji State University, Sattgast Hall. I encountered Dann in the stairway, and he stopped me to tell me about a new article he had read regarding pantheism and Darwinism. He had known I was a fan of Spinoza, who is arguably a pantheist himself. I had always known Dann as an atheist: he was a known terror on campus toward the Evangelical Fundamentalist Christians, a group of people I think we both considered inane in their absolute poverty of reasoning, logical consistency, and the profoundly negative affect it has on their views on education and society. But this article had seemed to explode his previous conceptions of what “the higher” could be. We had a great conversation, that mostly involved him explaining the article to me, but it was very interesting as the biology used in the article was in an interesting harmony with both Spinoza’s and Darwin’s theories: a link that I wanted to eventually establish but wasn’t sure how to at the time. It strikes me as an apposite memory of him: always ready to discuss ideas, connecting them both to his own interests and yours, willing to overthrow what he had previously thought for a more compelling idea if it should arrive, reveling in the conversation, and finding meaning in the community of thinkers.

Spinoza, the most influential philosopher on my own way of thinking, constructed a metaphysical and epistemological system that gave life to ideas: that ideas still worked and existed in no less a way than that of the life belonging to physical organisms– a sort of early-enlightenment version of memes, come to think of it. As I have seen the ways in which I think, teach, and write mature and change, I know that Dann’s influence on me remains, that many of his ideas are still living whenever I exercise my own, that when I teach and talk to my students, a part of him is teaching and talking to my students as well. For Spinoza, we are both ideas and bodies, and so long as our ideas are still persevering and growing, then we still live in an important sense.  I know, from countless conversations and the recent outpouring of messages left on Facebook and his memorial webpage, that the influence Dann has had on innumerable people, both students and friends, is immeasurable.

Whenever I think about Dann or Darwin, I will think about the other.  When Darwin was laid to rest at Westminster Abbey, the choir sung a piece based on Proverbs 3: “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom and getteth understanding.”

How happy you must have been…

I registered for a trigonometry class at my school last week. I recognize it’s a basic level of math, but my high school academic success was pathetic, and I’ve been paying for it ever since. Anyway, I am excited. It has been ten years since I took my BSU math class (college algebra), sixteen years since I took trigonometry (and earned C’s, if I remember), and eight years since I took any kind of class that required mathematics (algebra based physics). My mathematical mind is in disrepair, a rusty car engine that may be salvaged with proper maintenance.

My long-term goal, by the way, is to take one math class per semester until I am taking the highest level that this 2-year school offers (calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra) so that I can eventually understand some quantum physics and chemistry.

I am curious to see what ten years of philosophy has done to my mind, and how I will think differently about the mathematical concepts. The mind I inhabit now works differently than it did ten years ago. I dominated my college math and science classes in ways I never dreamed of in high school, but I am much busier now and further removed from my last math experience.

The first line of my textbook’s chapter 1 (after the preface which explained the history of the term functions, which touched on philosophers like Descartes and Leibniz, of course!) states: “We locate a point on the real number line by assigning it a single real number, called the coordinate of the point. For work in a two-dimensional plane, we locate points by using two numbers.” This is very basic stuff, but it has been an eternity since my eyes have passed over that postulate. And all I could think of was the feeling and thrill of reading Spinoza’s geometric method and the Kantian divide between intuitions and concepts. Glorious stuff. I am having a nerd-gasm.

I am lucky to be teaching in the heart of one of the world’s greatest cities.

Every now and then, I get to work early enough to take the rush-hour bus. Because I teach in the evenings, this is not common. The bus drops me off on Upper Wacker street and Wabash avenue, right by the river. Because of the straight flow of the river and the city design which has placed some of our most magnificent sky-scrapers and other buildings, the scene resembles a glittering and ominous canyon. On a clear day, with the sun bright and shining on the buildings’ windows, it looks more like a painting than something real. I have worked in this location for over three years, and yet this experience still catches me off guard, stuns me, and reminds me that I love Chicago.

In seven days, the semester will begin again. I have a feeling this one will punch especially hard, but I think I am more capable now than I was four months ago, and I was more capable four months ago than I was a year ago. I learned so much during my first 2 1/2 years as an adjunct, and now I feel that the learning curve started all over again a year ago.

Strangely, I feel empty. This break has overall been productive, although not as productive as my highest hopes had it. But to break it down: usually during break, I am very productive for a few days, and then I go on some kind of drinking/video-game/socializing/traveling binge (some of these binges are more worthwhile than others, and some are more addicting), and I ignore the work that I wanted to get done. But a few months ago, my computer was destroyed by accidentally spilling beer all over it, which has ended my video-game playing and, oddly, was around the time that I significantly reduced how much I drink. Over break, I traveled and socialized, but not to excessive degrees, and I had plenty of time to read, think, relax, and do a little bit of writing. I did not do nearly as much writing as I intended…goals for next time.

So, overall, I feel satisfied. But the difficult thing is, I also feel empty. I am sitting here, starving for something: perhaps another human being.  I have thought a lot about this over the past couple of weeks, as a lack of purpose and structure has afflicted me from time to time. Last week, I voluntarily went to school and worked on my classes while sitting in my classroom because it was the only way I would start feeling like I should work. On the two days I stayed home yesterday, I was nearly worthless, and afflicted with a touch of depression. I felt nothing to work toward: and the unfortunate thing about having such a demanding, purpose-driven job, is that when the job is inactive, I find I am handicapped in summoning that purpose on my own. Perhaps this is something that has afflicted me my entire life. Until the day I left for the Marines, I rarely felt much of a thirst for purpose. The Marines gave it to me, and then college gave it to me. But whenever I am on vacation, the feeling of purpose does not come easily. I have to force myself to feel any kind of purpose at all. But that “force” or “will” is not something I can just choose. I try to intellectualize it, and solve it like a puzzle, but that only rarely brings much success. I may be addicted to needing an external force to motivate that purpose, which is not something I admire about myself. I think this is why I can get so addicted to something like video-games: when I feel that emptiness of purpose, a game provides an entertaining purpose-driven structure. When I am feeling that emptiness, the game is a drug, because it provides exactly what I crave in doses that are designed to keep me coming back for more. Even the study and teaching of philosophy, no matter how fulfilling I feel it is at the time, cannot deliver on the speed, lights, thrill, and accessibility of a video game.

But despite this, I recognize my life is much more full without the video games. Because now, when I feel the emptiness, I either (A) struggle to find something to work to, because I absolutely despise that emptiness, or (B) give in to the emptiness and watch television shows or cruise the internet for too long: but at least this never persists for more than a few hours. The video game streaks could go weeks or months. Although I still crave it, I see it as the craving of a junkie for his drugs (even if this exaggerates the problem), and one that I need to resist. I’m four months “clean” now, and I’d like to keep it that way.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if this is what has drawn me to the philosophers Aristotle, Spinoza and Nietzsche. Each one of their ethical theories is devoted to thinking about the most important purposes of a person’s life, while denying that this purpose is something that is given or determined by anything beyond one’s self. That statement requires some qualification for Aristotle and Spinoza: For Aristotle, our purpose comes from our nature, which is certainly an external cause, but the purpose is an individual’s own happiness, and so it’s destination is not beyond the person’s self. For Spinoza, the purpose is “understanding God,” but, of course, God is not something that loves us or cares about our conduct, for Spinoza. And in fact, we are a part of God, identical to God: and our purpose is always the restructuring and improving of our own ideas.

For Nietzsche, this absence of an external purpose is more pure: when we look at the universe for purpose, all we see is the abyss, and that when we concentrate and revolve our minds around that abyss for too long, the abyss stares back into you. Is there any more perfect way of describing the emptiness I feel? God is Dead just means we recognize that there is no purpose to living, at least not one that comes from beyond ourselves. And so we must create one, knowing, rationally, that it is always a farce, a game that we are playing with ourselves. But it must be a game that is somehow worthwhile, that we are creating ourselves, and fighting through it ourselves, and the quality of the game and its obstacles becomes the quality of our own selves, and gives worth to its purpose.

I’ll finish this post with a quote from Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, section 283. But I will preface this by saying that the talk of “war” is a metaphorical war, where the battleground should be considered minds and the ideas that inhabit/live-in them.

Preparatory human beings. — I welcome all signs that a more virile, warlike age is about to begin, which will restore honor to courage above all. For this age shall prepare the way for one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength that this higher age will require some day–the age that will carry heroism into the search for knowledge and that will wage wars for the sake of ideas and their consequences. To this end we now need many preparatory courageous human beings who cannot very well leap out of nothing, any more than out of the sand and slime of present-day civilization and metropolitanism–human beings who know how to be silent, lonely, resolute, and content and constant in invisible activities; human beings who are bent on seeking in all things for what in them must be overcome; human beings distinguished as much by cheerfulness, patience, unpretentiousness, and contempt for all great vanities as by magnanimity in victory and forbearance regarding the small vanities of the vanquished; human beings whose judgment concerning all victors and the share of chance in every victory and fame is sharp and free; human beings with their own festivals, their own working days, and their own periods of mourning, accustomed to command with assurance but instantly ready to obey when that is called for–equally proud, equally serving their own cause in both cases; more endangered human beings, more fruitful human beings, happier beings! For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is  — to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer. At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due; it will want to rule and possess, and you with it! and you with it!